Gender Bias

Why is it that when I point to the gender biases prevalent all around in Indian society  that my male friends chose to turn deaf and blind?  They either give me that …’what’s your problem’ look or ignore it totally. Does it give them a certain pleasure, I wonder. Stories in the media highlight how certain women have risen above the biases, broken the glass ceiling, to be on the top of the charts. But these are few and far between. Scratch the surface of any woman in India and out come stories of facing biases all their lives. TV serials doling messages that women ought to be in their ‘laxman rekhas’ to have a place in society abound even in these days and times. ‘Na Aana Is Des Lado’ is one such serial on the Colors channel at prime time. The horrors that womenfolk of Ammaji’s household face here is unbelievable. But it strikes me as a true and a living example of instances seen in society. When I cringe at the torture the womenfolk face while watching the serial, I get laughed at by my family, who feel that it is nothing other than melodrama. Yet I have seen instances of girls being made to slog at homes, being deprived of an education, being married off to unsuitable grooms, beaten black and blue for daring to have a VOICE. So it comes as a ‘no surprise’ when the morning papers reiterate that on gender issues, India, does lag alarmingly behind. It states, “Be it the skewed sex ratio or the number of crimes against women, statistics again and again remind us about the distance we need to cover. While on paper there are enough laws to tackle every social menace, clearly that is not enough.” The paper also carries an  article showing Indian males as being number one in sexual violence. “Twenty-four per cent of Indian men have committed sexual violence at some point in their lives.”  And this is just one of the shocking findings made during a recent survey by International Men and Gender Equality Survey, conducted in six developing countries across four continents, to map attitudes and practices related to gender equality.